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Podcast: Big Brains
Episode: How Talk Builds Babies’ Brains with Dana Suskind
Description: When Prof. Dana Suskind first began implanting devices called cochlear implants on babies who couldn’t hear, she quickly noticed something about her patients. “The cochlear implant would allow sound to go to a child’s brain, but something else was needed to make those sounds have meaning.” Suskind observed that many of her patients struggled to develop language because their parents didn’t talk to them as much. It was a revelation that inspired her to found the Thirty Million Words Initiative, which aims to narrow that achievement gap. The program has since led to a best...